ABSTRACT
In 1916, the Harvard Law School awarded the Addison Brown prize for the best essay of the year to Gerald Henderson. Henderson had traced the metamorphosis over almost 150 years of the US corporation, from that of a limited group almost devoid of legal rights to a virtually unrestrained organization of great legal privilege. The Sherman Act is the virtual heart of US economic policy, holding the competition is essential to the welfare of the society. Competition is the economic equivalent of political democracy, serving to diffuse economic power and thus to provide a means of preventing undue concentrations of that power. The US Multinational Corporation (USMNC), a subject of intensive study, is the final element of the research question. Although the MNC may have become the characteristic organization of the present age, its inner workings are not germane to the question.
